Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(58)

Drummond House Sigil



As tired as I was, the more time I spent with the book, the better my classroom performance. My spells accomplished what they were supposed to, levitating objects at will, instead of at random. I stopped blowing up geodes in crystallography. I caught on to the ritual dances, though I still wasn’t as light on my feet as Alicia, when she was well enough to join in class. Ivy’s theory was that because I wasn’t trying to force it, my magic was cooperating more. Suddenly, magic was more than a game, a challenge to see what I was capable of. I could help people, children like Alicia who were born with compromised systems. Maybe I could help her find a cure for her reverb if I kept studying.

More and more of my classmates were being friendly to me, despite being on Callista’s dreaded “black list” of students that she’d cut socially. After a heartfelt apology to Blanche Ironwood, she helped me with my grip on the arrows, so I hit the target instead of my belomancy classmates. Charlotte Rasmurti, who was president of her class, joined Ivy, Alicia and me at our dining hall table one morning for breakfast. And before we knew it, the table was full for every meal. Jeanette Drummond, a lovely girl with quicksilver eyes and hair so dark it seemed to absorb the light around her, invited me and Ivy to an after-curfew gathering in her room, where about a dozen girls ate sweets and talked about their families, classes, the latest newspaper serial causing a scandal – normal girl things. Alicia joined us, but she fell asleep just a few minutes after the first toffee was unwrapped. Ivy and I tended to linger at the outside of the group, hearing much and saying little, but it felt wonderful to be included. Charlotte’s group and Jeanette’s group were both different than Callista’s. There was no agenda, no back-biting. We didn’t have to safeguard every word we said, though I did anyway for obvious reasons. We didn’t have to worry about the girls’ alliances shifting, just because we didn’t do every little thing just as we were asked.

I walked down the hall to my classes and I was greeted merrily by familiar faces and some girls I couldn’t even name. I was accepted. I was part of a crowd, instead of standing out. I felt at ease.

For the first time since I’d arrived at Miss Castwell’s, I truly thought I had a chance of making a home there.



So of course, the moment I dropped my guard, I was almost immediately attacked.

I was sitting in the garden, enjoying what was sure to be the last of the tolerably cool late November days before winter dug its cold claws in. The weak morning sunlight filtered through the bare tree limbs. I shivered into my green wool coat, grateful for the thick blanket that cushioned me from the cold ground. The fresh air and isolation from the other girls was just what I needed to clear my mind. Just being near so many plants made me feel better.

Ivy was busy with a remedial poppet-making class, and Alicia considered sitting outside in the cold to be a patently stupid way to spend an afternoon. Even Phillip had elected to stay inside on his nice warm perch, eating seeds and laughing at his silly mistress in some silent bird manner.

I was sitting on a blanket under an ancient birch tree on the back lawn, that the students called the Weeping Tree, because it was supposedly where generations of girls went to cry out their broken hearts. My heart was intact, but my brain seemed to be a bit wobbly. The long hours of studying and working with the book were catching up to me.

With final exams approaching in a few weeks, I was spending almost as much time with my potions textbook as I did the Mother Book. Calpernia McCray strongly advised against this, warning that too much time with the Mother Book drained her of her magic and weakened her physically. I told myself that it would only last until finals and the holidays were over, and then I would coast on my good grades through spring – unlike those poor seniors who were facing winter finals and the Spring Interview.

And potion making was still difficult for me, because potion ingredients did not behave like kitchen ingredients. They had to be mixed in a precise, detailed manner under certain phases of the moon with certain tools. I had always been what Mum had called a “pinch of this, dash of that” cook, which meant my potions mark was average – and that was only because the teacher, Miss Guiry, was very kind.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the rough bark of the tree, running over the various formulas in my head. Ground scarab shells mixed with the juice of a floating fig, warmed gently over a driftwood fire for a shrinking draught. Chopped smoking dragon roots combined with minced winter garlic and sea salt for a poultice to treat magical burns. Clippings from a chimera’s claws… Well, they exploded no matter what you mixed them with.

I shuddered. I needed a break, something pleasant to focus on. I drew a piece of elegant stationery from my reticule, creased and limp from being opened so many times. Gavin McCray had taken to writing to me every few days. First in response to the thank you note I’d sent, and then I wrote a thank you in response, and then we got pulled into a sort-of endless thank you note cycle that turned into regular correspondence. He was incredibly intelligent, but single-minded when he was focused on a project. He got incredibly annoyed when the board of directors for McCray Energy insisted that he attend meetings to approve that budget or this hiring. He worried for Alicia and her health. He worried about his mother, who felt she needed to keep up the family’s social commitments, even as she grieved the husband she’d lost only two years before. He was annoyed with his classmates, Owen in particular, who didn’t seem to take schooling as seriously as he did.